Day 249

Today's Reading: Revelation 11

Whenever I read Revelation 11, my mind goes back to the three temptations Jesus experienced in the wilderness that started His public ministry—especially to the third temptation.

Today’s chapter reminds us that Satan will tempt us with the right outcome but with bad shortcuts getting there. Always remember the journeys God puts us on toward a desired end have our spiritual growth in mind. One of those shortcuts that Satan has gotten so many to bow to has been immorality and fornication. Fornication is having sex outside of the covenant of marriage. The lie of immorality has been, If I love you, then I should sleep with you. It’s sabotaging the growth journey. Commitment and covenant are the prerequisites for intimacy, not love. Love leads us to commitment and covenant, not to the bedroom. In the waiting period, we learn patience, we learn how to develop other important areas, we learn respect, and we learn what real love is. Immorality and fornication are shortcuts that will always hurt the future of a relationship because they are sins.

Jesus was tempted to take a shortcut when His ministry was launched with forty days of fasting and Satanic temptation. In order to see the magnitude of the Revelation 11 verse, we have to see the three temptations of Jesus and key in on the third one.

In order for the temptation to be a temptation, it has to attract us. It has to have something that we want. What was in it that attracted Jesus?

There were three satanic requests made to Jesus: make bread from stones, throw Himself off the pinnacle, bow before Satan.

Satan requested those things because he was asking Jesus for proof: prove You are God’s Son, prove the Bible is true, prove You don’t want it now.

In the first temptation, Satan is saying, the way to fix your own doubts/insecurity is by what you do instead of trusting what God says. God already told Jesus that Jesus is His beloved Son, so Satan said, “If You are the Son, turn these stones to bread.”

In the second temptation, Satan quotes the Bible and wants Jesus to live out a misinterpretation of Scripture. He quotes Psalm 91 but not completely, telling Jesus to jump off the temple, and the angels will rescue Him. But Psalm 91 isn’t meant for random temple jumping. This is like what churches are doing by snake-handling to prove Mark 16:18: “They will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them.” It’s dangerous, and people have died. Don’t jump without a full context.

Finally, in the third temptation telling Jesus that He can have it all sooner than He thinks if He only takes a shortcut: “The devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory; and he said to Him, ‘All these things I will give You, if You fall down and worship me’” (Matthew 4:8-9).

That’s what Satan told Jesus. That’s what Satan tells Jesus’ children: “Bow down now, and you can get what you want sooner.” But what he doesn’t tell us is by taking the shortcut, we lose the process and the maturity that comes in pain and affliction, and patience.

These are some shortcuts: cheating on a test to cheating on a marriage, lying to get money, lying on an application, not tithing, exaggerating, plagiarizing, and the list goes on. The satanic proposal is that we should have it all now, and the only thing we have to do to get it is to bow. To Jesus, he was saying that He could bypass suffering and the cross and the three years of ministry by bowing to his agenda and clock, not God’s clock.

When you get it sooner than God’s clock, you also get exhaustion, disappointment, strained or tainted character, and no joy.

The good news is that Jesus did not bow! Jesus did not take the shortcut!</